A wholly unexpected film, as heady and surprising in its humor as in its emotional texture.

Rachel Lang’s first feature isn’t about placing Ana on the road to her life’s purpose; it’s a serpentine trip through impetuous leaps forward and messy retreats.

Project Hail Mary is wholesome science fiction that satisfies like a jumbo serving of apple pie and milk.

Catnip for comedy nerds and psychoanalysts, "Jim & Andy" works as both a vibrant raising-of-the-dead for the crazed, showbiz-piercing genius that was Kaufman — there's plenty of footage from his performance-art career — and a peek into the mind of a massively talented, box office-busting comedy star at a self-doubting, turbulent time in his life

For most of its running time, Relic feels more like a chamber piece than a full-fledged horror outing, but a nail-biting third act ups the ante.

A documentary that shouldn't have to be made, about a law that needn't exist, explored via a crime that could have been avoided: 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets is a thought-provoking, mournful experience, perhaps more so in the wake of the killings in Charleston, S.C.

The most gripping parts of Advocate are the film’s fly-on-the-wall cinéma vérité sequences of Tsemel at work, meeting with clients’ families, navigating the legal system and conferring about cases with fellow attorneys and her staff.

Joy and redemption aren't exactly punk mantras, but A Band Called Death might just give your heart a thrashing.

With her unblinking but nonjudgmental eye, Spheeris doesn't shy away from the horrifying, at times violent messes these kids make of their lives, but she is always sensitive to the pain behind everything, to the unhappy futility of squandered potential.

It’s easy to give in to despair. What We Feed People makes clear is that you can help with a simple, small act of empathy.

Powered by unbridled optimism, Gameau defies skeptics by doing his homework and bringing receipts.

While the setting may be humble, Margolin captures the unlikely beauty of the Valley, and injects thrilling suspense into this yarn, one that transforms quotidian dramas — like making an unprotected left turn, or closing pop-up ads on a webpage — into nail-biting action sequences.

In the end, even in the howling high frequencies and the nihilistic night, this R-rated movie misses its best shot. It doesn't talk hard enough. [22 Aug 1990, p.5]

Clear-eyed and urgent.

The history of slavery was vividly relived through the memories of a fictional 110-year-old woman beautifully played by Cicely Tyson in a story adapted for TV by Tracy Keenan Wynn and directed by John Korty. The climactic scene, when Miss Jane defiantly drank from a "whites-only" water fountain, was one of TV's most memorable moments in one of TV's most memorable movies. [23 Apr 1989, p.25]

The film is pleasantly reminiscent of ’90s neo-noirs in both style and storytelling, but with a narrative fearlessness and visual imagination that makes it totally fresh.

There’s also a fascinating dive into the inequalities that bedevil Boys State and Girls State themselves, reminding us how organizations often embody, at a structural level, some of the very problems they’re ostensibly trying to rectify.

The film is then not so much a meditation but a reverie, a swirl of emotions and ideas, managing to be both calmly reflective and skittishly anxious at the same time. Calvary is a serious comedy, a funny drama, a ruminative film about life and a lively film about death.

Tom Jones is a product of the excesses as well as the experimentalism of its time: Some of the style quirks are just silly, and there's a tiresome nudge-nudge, wink-wink quality to much of the humor. It's well worth a repeat visit, though. [25 Oct 1989, p.F11]

This isn’t the first time Shinkai has raised the specter of environmental disaster within the context of a swooningly sentimental teenage fantasy, and if this one doesn’t achieve the dazzling intricacies or soaring emotional heights of “Your Name,” its easy blend of enchantment and feeling is nearly as hard to resist.

Even if one considers Apples part of the so-called Greek Weird Wave, such a subtly thoughtful and soothing approach to probe at existential concerns, rather than being predictably cynical or violent, makes it stand out.

Though all these technological trappings are newer than new, the human needs for happiness, applause and emotional connection are classic. The ability of People’s Republic of Desire to show these familiar desires playing out in futuristic surroundings is invariably surprising and never less than compelling.

Hicks' unabashed love letter is, above all, a stirring picture of communion between artists.

It is a devastating film to watch.

It's as engaging, as modest, as utterly American and as thrilling as the true-life story it's based on. [11 Dec 1986, Calendar, p.6-1]

A Touch of Sin, the powerful if uneven new film by highly regarded Chinese director Jia Zhangke, is a corrosive depiction of the New China.

The fascination and at times the frustration of her achievement is that she has drained away some of the story’s juiciest, most suspenseful elements.... There is compromise in all this narrative subtraction, but there is also purpose.

The movie welds subtly pointed social commentary onto a straightforward but satisfying narrative of self-discovery.